CHRIST came to set men free.He said, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon
me; because the LORD hath anointed me. . . to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”Isaiah 61:1.Perfect liberty is found only in Christ.God’s law is called the law of liberty.The Inspired Word calls that law a
hedge.It marks out the unchangeable
principles of right between man and God, and between man and man, which must be
recognized, else liberty is impossible to intelligent beings.All slavery, physical, moral, and intellectual,
comes from breaking that law.Liberty
is found only in obedience to it.Still
there is a sort of slavery in the futile attempt to keep it in our own
strength.But Christ, through the new
covenant, writes that law in the heart, so that we not only have power to keep
it, but His will becomes ours, and with Christ we delight to do His will,
because His law is in our hearts.Here
is perfect liberty.The perfectly saved
will be perfectly free.Throughout
eternity they will do just what they please, because they please to do just
what makes liberty and joy possible.

Now, as to the relation of the state to
the conscience of man, Christ found men enslaved to kings and priests.He taught that all men are brothers, sons of
one Father, and therefore equal before the law – equal in civil rights.Rulers were, therefore, only their servants,
chosen under God to protect them in the enjoyment of their rights.He freed us from the chains of priestcraft
by teaching the absolute independence of the individual soul in matters
religious, and by promising the spirit of truth to guide each one into all
truth.

It is true that all liberty comes through
keeping God’s law, but God Himself, who wrote that law in the hearts of men in
the beginning, who spoke it amid the thunders of Sinai, that all might hear and
obey, who waits through the new covenant to rewrite it in every trusting soul –
God Himself, who did all this, still made man as free to disobey these precepts
as to obey them.Why did God allow all
this fearful iniquity that man might be made free?To this there can be but one answer.It was because He knew the worthlessness of all forced obedience,
and that, therefore, the freedom to sin was absolutely necessary to the
possibility of righteousness.

After having made men free to sin, that the
internal principle of love might work itself out in outward acts of
righteousness unhindered by force – after having made men thus, has God given
to any human authority the right to take away that freedom, and so to thwart
His plans?He has commanded all men to
worship Him and obey His precepts, and this command applies to each individual
personally; but has He ever commanded any man or set of men to compel others to
worship Him, or to act even outwardly as if they worshiped Him?To ask these questions is to answer them
emphatically in the negative.

The civil power is the power of arbitrary
force to compel men who will not be righteous, to at least be civil, that men
may live together in peace and quietness.The true power of the church is the power of divine love manifest in the
flesh, to win men to lead righteous lives.The two powers are entirely separate, and Jesus so taught when He said,
“Render to Caesar [the civil powers] the things that are Caesar’s, and to God
the things that are God’s.”Mark 12:17.

When Peter, as a member of the Christian
church, sought to defend the truth by the sword, Jesus, pointing to His Father
as the Church’s only Source of power, said, “Put up again thy sword into his
place:for all they that take the sword
[i.e., in religious matters] shall perish with the sword.”Matthew 26:52.The tares are to be allowed to grow with the wheat until the
harvest.Then God will send forth His
angels to gather out the tares to burn them.No human effort of arbitrary force can be used in rooting them out, lest
in the act the wheat shall be rooted also.See Matthew 13:24-30.

Again Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of
this world:if my kingdom were of this
world, then would my servants fight.”John 18:36.Every civil law has
the power of the sword back of it.If
it is right to make law, then it is right to enforce it.In denying the church the power of the
sword, Jesus therefore forbade the church to ask the state for laws enforcing
beliefs and observances.Paul understood
this when he said, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty
through God to the pulling down of strong holds.”2 Corinthians 10:4.

The early church, strong only in the
power of God, triumphed grandly, even over the opposing forces of a false
religion, upheld by the state.Only
when she allied herself with the state, seeking its aid, did she deny her God,
lose her power, and darken the world into a night of a thousand years.The present effort of the church to get the
state to enforce religious observances of the Seventh Day Adventist faith is
but a revival of the pagan and papal doctrine of force in religious things and
as such it is antichristian.

Adapted
from:American Sentinel, Jan. 17, 1895.
(By G. E. Fifield)

Reprint of The Watchman, May 1, 1906 published in May, 1997 issue of Our Firm Foundation
(Mistakenly attributed to Ellen G. White)